Much of the world's oil comes from the Middle East. If those oil-producing nations were somehow unable to conduct operations, it would be a huge blow to the global economy. Reports claim that the Iranian oil industry has been hit with a large cyber attack. Iran has disconnected computer systems at a number of its oil production facilities from the web in response to a cyber attack that occurred over the weekend.

Reuters reports that a source at the National Iranian Oil Company told it that a virus had been discovered in the control systems at the Kharg Island Oil terminal. That oil terminal handles most of Iran's crude oil exports. Other computer systems at Iran's Oil Ministry and its national oil company were also hit by the attackers.

A spokesman for the oil ministry Ali Reza Nikzad-Rahbar claims that the attack didn't cause significant damage and that the worm used in the attack was discovered before infecting systems. Iran has offered no details on exactly what worm or malware was used in the attack and the oil facilities were allegedly disconnected from the Internet simply as a precaution.

This isn't the first time that Iran has been attacked by cyber criminals. In 2010, the country was the main target of the Stuxnet worm, which was found to be targeting Iran's uranium enrichment program. SecurityWeek also reports that Iran was attacked by the Duqu worm and the country bolstered its cyber defenses after those attacks.

“Iran's Revolutionary Guard claims to have created a "hack-proof" network for all sensitive data,” blogged Chester Wisniewski, senior security advisor at Sophos Canada. “I have yet to see a hack-proof network and if they have convinced themselves it's true, perhaps that is part of the problem…One thing is clear, whether you are an oppressive regime, or simply an average small business, anyone who depends upon the internet will face malware threats and hacking attempts.”

Iran doesn't even export to the US. If anybody is driving up oil prices it's the US, having driven up EU oil prices by placing extra sanctions on it's allies for buying oil from iran, which the EU did do, and because of which the price of brent did rise.

But since the EU jumped ship, the US or any of it's allies no longer gets oil from iran. A perfect time to take out their oil industry, since it has the smallest amount of effect on the US or EU oil prices.

Sorry, but when somebody asks me wether it's more likely that iranians did this to themselves or the US did it, i'd say the US did it. Or israel, probably israel. But then again i doubt this stuff doesn't get communicated to israel's main ally. But then again, israel is getting more agressive lately so who knows.

Well, Iran already has trie to drive up American oil prices (and actually had) by threatening closure of the STrait of Hormuz very recently... even if we do not directly purchase Iranian oil, if their oil does not hit the market, the overall global supply is lowered which via speculation drives global prices up.